Global precedence effect in fear generalization and the role of trait anxiety and intolerance of uncertainty.

Abstract

Fear overgeneralization is widely considered to be a core feature of pathological anxiety, and the excessive spread of fear can be a great burden on patients. Although perceptual processing is a basic process of human cognition, the impact of visual perception recognition on fear generalization has not yet been fully explored. In this study, 69 subjects were recruited to explore the effects of the hierarchical features of stimuli on fear generalization and examine the roles of trait anxiety (TA) and intolerance of uncertainty (IU) in this process. The results reveal that compared with the local features, the subjects showed stronger fear responses to global features of the stimuli, and the weakest fear response was to the reversed features. Furthermore, the results preliminarily suggest that in generalization dominated by global features, TA intensifies the fear response; while in generalization dominated by local features, along with TA, IU makes a unique contribution to increasing the magnitude of fear generalization. These results confirm new potential pathways for fear generalization, specifically the configurational hierarchical features of stimuli. This is explained through object recognition and cognitive bias, implying that cognitive processes and personality traits have interacting effects on fear generalization.